Posts Tagged ‘photography studio’

Current Golden Decade Exhibits and Book Events

Smith Andersen North Gallery

Laguna Art Museum

Minnesota Street Project

San Francisco Art Institute

Bankhead Theater Gallery

The Golden Decade, San Francisco, Ansel Adams, Minor White and the California School of Fine Arts History

Piers, Waterfront, San Francisco, California, 1948 by Philip Hyde. An original vintage contact silver print of this photograph was the first to sell at the first Golden Decade Show in 2010 at Smith Andersen North, attended by over 500 people. (Click on image to see large.)

In subsequent years, students from the Golden Decade period put on a number of retrospective exhibitions, most of them located at the school, renamed the San Francisco Art Institute.

Contemporary Interest and Events

Interest in the photography of both students and teachers from the Golden Decade era stepped up significantly when Stephanie Comer, Deborah Klochko and Jeff Gunderson began interviewing and researching their 2006 book, “The Moment of Seeing: Minor White at the California School of Fine Art.” During the lead up to their book release, in December 2005, four months before Philip Hyde passed on, David Leland Hyde took his father to a reunion lunch in San Francisco organized by Ken and Victoria Whyte Ball. At the reunion lunch classmates who had not seen each other in many years, sometimes as long as 50 years or more, exchanged stories, signed each other’s prints, helped identify people in photographs, and talked of the years since photography school and the unforgettable times during photography school.

From 2010 to 2015, there were more Golden Decade Group Exhibits and a number of shows by the individual photographers at Smith Andersen North and elsewhere. At Mumm Winery in Napa, California, the holders of a large permanent collection of original Ansel Adams prints, Mumm Napa put on a Golden Decade show in February 2014. Stefan Kirkeby, gallery owner of Smith Andersen North, who had taken a special interest in representing and helping Golden Decade photographers, put on exhibitions of photographic prints by Golden Decade artists Benjamen Chinn, Ruth-Marion Baruch and Pirkle Jones, Leonard Zielaskiewicz, Charles Wong, Paul Caponigro, Philip Hyde and John Upton. The widely acclaimed and attended Smith Andersen North show This Land Is Our Land: Philip Hyde and the American Wilderness, put together by Stefan Kirkeby and David Leland Hyde, enjoyed a turnout larger than any other show at the gallery besides the 2010 Golden Decade show.

Book signings kicked off in the US at the famous Strand bookstore in New York City on Saturday, October 29. The Strand, one of the world’s most prominent English language bookstores, was established in 1927 and claims to contain 18 miles of books. From then on Steidl has kept Ken and Victoria Whyte Ball busy doing book signing events. Other Golden Decade photographers who are still alive, with us and have also attended and signed books at some signings include John Upton, Gerald Ratto, David Johnson, Stan Zrnich, Charles Wong, Stephen Goldstein and Zoe Lowenthal.

Following the book signing at the Strand in New York, the next major Golden Decade event was an opening and book signing at Smith Andersen North for Golden Decade photographer Gerald Ratto. Gerald Ratto’s photography exhibit was on view from November 12 thru December 23, 2016. Many Golden Decade fans bought books and had them signed at this gallery opening.

On March 1, 2017 back at the photography program campus at the San Francisco Art Institute, there will be another Golden Decade book signing and presentation. Specifics on the two shows currently up and ongoing and the upcoming signing at SFAI are listed below.